Lightweight (≤60 kilograms), Men

As in a number of other weight divisions at the Moscow Olympic Games the two main protagonists came from the host nation, the USSR, and from Cuba. Cuba’s representative was Ángel Herrera, the featherweight champion at the 1976 Olympic Games and the 1978 World Championship, and his main rival was Viktor Demyanenko of the Soviet Union who had won both the European Championship and the World Cup in 1979. Their progress to a meeting for the Olympic championship was relatively untroubled. For the first two rounds the final was closely contested with the Cuban possibly holding the advantage but at the start of the third, a cut above Demyanenko’s eye worsened and the fight was stopped by the ringside doctor. The pro-Soviet crowd was unhappy that what they considered rough tactics by the Cuban has been responsible for the home fighter’s injury. Herrera was one of six Cubans to win Olympic boxing titles in 1980. He added another world title in 1982 and was a silver medalist at the 1983 Pan American Games.